I recently read DANCING AZTECS and he really had a gift for putting the
human condition into practical and humorous perspective. He will
always be missed.
Best,
Harry
Quoting "David L. Wilson" <dwilson@sccn.net>:
> Oh boy, this one hurts. Westlake and I had several friends in common
> and all of them spoke affectionately and respectfully of him,
> always. His personality was as large, it seems, as the shadow from
> his prose. Everyone else was in second place. I very much hoped to
> meet him and add him to my series of interviews with crime writers
> but we were never in the same place at the same time. A great
> writer who may be my all-time favorite, who convinced me again of the
> undying beauty of the novel and the mystery form. For many years
> there's been no one who I'd seek out in the bookstores like
> Westlake. A new Stark was an event for me. Just a great great
> loss. I have so few heros left.
>
> Death seems to have greeted him as a professional, swift and sudden,
> without emotion or hesitation. A Westlake moment. Despite his
> subjects, and the controlled mayhem of his characters. Westlake was a
> writer of elegance and compassion. I was pleased last week because
> I'd found a copy of his first novel. I was going to quote from
> another of his books but I've pulled it out often enough that it
> wasn't filed with its cousins, a book he did not claim but that I
> returned to, on occasion, because it filled me with a great sense of
> love and balance, a recognition that we are all in this same game
> together. It consoled me and made some of life's challenges easier
> to bear.
>
> This is the life of a writer. You will touch the lives of those you
> have never met. You will help them through their own private hells
> and they will weep, someday, when you are gone.
>
> I'll have to go and reread some of my favorite memories with the
> guy. He left us so much.
>
> David Laurence Wilson
>
>
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